At 04:45 PM 11/24/2006 +0000, Ian Davis wrote:
>On 24/11/2006 16:20, Murray Maloney wrote:
>>Dan wrote a GRDDL result that is much more complex than I had hoped,
>>but he said that it was an accurate RDF representation of the triple:
>> "Stephen King" "is author of" "The Stand".
>>I am totally willing to accept the proposition that Dan and I got it
>>wrong. I would love
>>to see the example that gets it right, and I only hope that I will be
>>able to follow it.
>
>I would suggest this:
>
><rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.com/authors#king">
> <ex:isAuthorOf rdf:resource="http://example.com/books#stand" />
></rdf:Description>
Bzzzt. Sorry, wrong answer. Thanks for trying.
Those URIs tell me nothing. Actually, they tell me "Unable to Connect"
And what is the namespace "ex" and how do I find out the meaning of
the isAuthorOf property in that namespace?
>>This exercise has reinforced my intuition that the Semantic Web is even
>>more prone
>>to misinterpretation than common English prose embedded within XHTML. My
>>intuition
>>tells me that
>> http://www.stephenking.com/pages/works/stand/
>>is a web page which conveys the fact that "Stephen King" "is author of"
>>"The Stand"
>
>The problem could be that your statement above conveys more information
>than simply "Stephen King" "is author of" "The Stand".
Allow me to rephrase in somewhat more pedantic terms:
There exists an information resource
http://www.stephenking.com/pages/works/stand/
from which I, a human being with reasonable grasp of the English
language,
can easily deduce that there exists a novel entitled "The Stand"
whose author
is "Stephen King".
I can also easily deduce that all URIs which begin with
"http://www.stephenking.com/"
are related to the self-same "Stephen King".
I can further and easily deduce that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King/ is also
about the same "Stephen King"
>You're also saying that the page at the url you specify states the above
>fact. That's the source of the additional complexity. You're stating facts
>like (pseudo-rdf ahead):
>
>http://www.stephenking.com/pages/works/stand/ "is a" "web page"
Well, an Information Resource in Web parlance, so I hope that we can treat
that as
an already known fact. No extra complexity.
>http://www.stephenking.com/pages/works/stand/ "conveys fact" "the fact"
All Information Resources, by definition, contain information. No extra
complexity there.
>"the fact" "has subject" "stephen king"
>
>"the fact" "has predicate" "is author of"
>
>"the fact" "has object" "The Stand"
On this much we agree. So why is it so hard to get the GRDDL WG, as a
representative
sample of the Semantic Web community, to agree on how you spell that
triple? And why is
it even harder to have them agree on a consistent interpretation after the
triple has been published?
Don't get me wrong. I am really hoping that y'all can answer these
questions and help get me
to a place where I can read and write RDF well enough to be able to read
and write simple and
straightforward examples. I am hoping that I can get to place where I can
really see the merit
in using RDF to convey information. As it is, I find it easier to discover
authors and titles
in HTML and DocBook than RDF/XML because I can follow my nose to a DTD or
Schema
whose prose descriptions of elements/properties are far easier to grok than
any RDF that
I have ever seen.
Regards,
Murray